NEW DELHI : Ankur Dhama, 22 years, , who has been consistently winning medals for the country in Para Championships all over the world. A student of Delhi’s St Stephen’s college, Dhama competes in Track 11 category for the completely blind and, though he has no use for them, he sometimes wears a snazzy pair of glasses as a style statement!
Ankur Dhama was born in Baghpat, a small village in Uttar Pradesh, to a family of farmers. He started losing his vision gradually when he was 5 years old and by the time he turned 6, Dhama’s eyesight had completely failed.
“Doctors said it was due to an injury but I’ve no idea when that happened. I’ve been operated upon seven or eight times but my vision can’t be restored or even improved,” says Dhama.
On the suggestion of his doctor, he moved to Delhi and attended JPM Senior Secondary School for the Blind at Lodhi Road. With the encouragement of his sister, a physical education teacher, Dhama took to outdoor sports like a duck to water. He says:
“I loved playing cricket and would play the sport all day long with friends. Being the fastest in my group I was often asked to be the runner for the batsman, a role I especially enjoyed, along with fielding.”
At school too, Dhama was always active in sports. It was here that he first got to hear about the para games for the differently abled from the Indian Blind Sports Association. The Indian Blind Sports Association has been organizing national sports meets for the Blind jointly with Blind Relief Association (BRA) once every two years. Seeing his seniors participate in the event, which brought hundreds of enthusiastic blind sports persons from all over the country together at one place, motivated Dhama to join in as well.
Dhama has been running faster and faster ever since he began training in 2006. He first competed internationally while still in school. He won two golds—the first of many—at the World Youth and Student Championships in 2009. He was selected because, at the 2008 Indian Blind Sports Association’s National Meet, he won gold and set the junior records for both 400 and 800 metres. He covered them in 1:1 minutes and 2:25 minutes, respectively, breaking previous records of 1:3 minutes and 2:37 minutes.
He’s become a lot faster since then – at the Para Games competitions at Malaysia (two golds in 800m and 1500m), Dubai (silver in 800m and bronze in 1500m) and Sharjah (gold in 1500m and bronze in 800m). The medal run continued at the 2014 Para Asian games at Incheon. His timings of 4:23 minutes in 1,500m and 2:9 minutes in 800m fetched him bronze and silver medals respectively. Competing for the first time in the 5000m category, he also won his second bronze with a timing of 16:41 minutes.
In 2013, he also represented India at the Thailand Football Championship in Bangkok. It was the first time that an Indian para-football 5-a-side team had participated at an international football event. Ankur Dhama was the first person ever to score a goal for India in an international football tournament for the blind.
After finishing school with commendable grades, Ankur enrolled in the prestigious St. Stephen’s College, while simultaneously pursuing his passion for sport. Talking about his college, Dhama says:
“St Stephen’s has been very supportive. My applications for attendance waiver and other permissions are cleared. And whenever I’ve asked for anything—adjustment in meal times or urgent leave, for instance—its been accommodated.”
But everything has not been smooth running obviously. Hailing from a small farmer’s family, it was impossible for Dhama to fund the frequent travel expenses of participating in world events.
Failing to find sponsors who would fund his tickets and his stay abroad, Dhama would have been unable to compete at these events if not for his coach, Dronacharya Awardee Satyapal Singh. Singh is the Sports Director at Delhi University’s Acharya Narendra Dev College, but he spends his mornings and evenings training para-athletes free of cost at the stadium.
It is a little known fact that India’s first Olympic gold medal in an individual sport was actually won by one of India’s para athletes, Devendra Jhajharia. Devendra is an amputee who won the javelin throw event – his world record, set in 2004, is unbeaten even today.
The incredible and humbling achievements of such Indian para athletes show us that they are winners not just in sports but also in life. While every sportsperson has a desire to excel, para athletes have a special kind of resilience. Through their performances, they showcase to the world what can be achieved when testing your body to its absolute limits. Through their sporting performances that regularly redefine the boundaries of possibility, para athletes challenge stereotypes and transform attitudes, helping to increase inclusion by breaking down social barriers and discrimination towards people with impairments. (agencies)
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